As the Driven Snow

One

Eleanor was the only passenger to get off the train in Brattleboro.

Clutching her puffer tight to her torso and dragging a suitcase that was eighty-percent books, her breath made clouds in front of her. It was infinitely colder than California, and the scanty winter wardrobe that she had retained after a year and a half in the Golden State would be a disappointment for any native Vermonter.

Eleanor hadn’t wanted to come. It was only at her parents’ begging that she was leaving the sun-bathed UC Berkeley campus in favor of the middle of nowhere. But her breath rasping in the freezing clean air, she was glad to be home. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the quiet.

Ten miles north of Brattleboro, the tiny town of Shelby sat under the looming shadow of its mountain namesake. Not to be confused with Shelburne, by any means— Shelby, Vermont had a population too small to be worth counting and made its money primarily off of tourists who came to gawk at leaves in the fall and ski when the snow came. Eleanor loved it.

That was her final destination. But for now, she stood on the platform watching the train pull away, her fingers and toes slowly freezing. She dug her phone from her pocket and fired off a text to Leah.

i’m here. where are you?

At a whole two years younger than Eleanor, Leah was still in her senior year of high school. But she had a car and could drive with far better skill than Eleanor ever could. Her car would be buried in the back of the garage at home.

She came jogging across the Co-op parking lot just as Eleanor reached the top of the hill. Leah was a rural New-England girl through and through. She drove a rusty old truck that had belonged to her grandfather, thrifted all her clothes, drank kombucha, and worked at Walker’s Farm in the summer. Dressed in plaid pants and an oversized leather jacket, the cold had burned pink patches into her sepia cheeks.

“Hey!” her voice was deeper than Eleanor remembered. She beamed, arms stretched wide.

“Hey!” Eleanor laughed breathlessly, releasing the embrace. “It’s so good to see you!”

“Aah! You too!” Leah squealed. “Welcome home.”

They sat pressed comfortably in a corner at Amy’s café, munching identical hot-pressed sandwiches. Eleanor had a maple latte, her staple drink. Leah mocked her for its “basic-ness”.

Amy’s had been a tradition for them before Eleanor had gone to college. After a half-day at school or a weekend thrift-trip, they would stop for lunch at Amy’s, spending an ungodly amount on specialty sandwiches— and in Eleanor’s case, lattes— and sit by the window watching the train tracks and the river and talking about everything and nothing.

“Have I missed anything?” she asked, wiping a dribble of melted cheese from her chin.

Leah grinned crookedly. “Let’s see…” she drew out the e, pretending to think as she raked her curls into a high ponytail.

“So that’d be no, huh?”

“Nope.”

“Gotta appreciate predictability.” If Eleanor were to write a memoir on growing up here, she would probably have titled it Nothing Important Happened Today. Like that X-Files episode. Only it wouldn’t be ironic.

The room was smaller than she remembered it. Maybe having to do with the boxes piled up against one wall, blocking the closet and east-facing window. That made it dark, too. Eleanor flicked on the light switch.

“You can move those.” her dad said. “They’re mostly empty, probably just stack up in one corner.”

“Wow. Thanks.”

Her mother shook her head fondly at her deadpan expression. “At least we didn’t give your room to Kelly.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” said Eleanor. “Is she still in school?”

The last time she saw her sister, she was in her VSCO girl phase. She wondered what she looked like now.

Her dad looked at his watch. “I’m picking her up… shit. Now.”

Eleanor snorted a laugh as his heavy footsteps clopped down the stairs. She smiled at her mother.

“Glad to be home?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It’ll be nice to have a quiet holiday.”

As her mother shut the door behind her, Eleanor heaved her suitcase up on the twin bed and sat next to it. It was still fitted with the same worn floral-patterned sheets and hand-made quilt she had kept all her childhood.

It wasn’t just the boxes that made the room feel small. Eleanor was just older. Taller. Everything felt small compared to when she had left. In a way it was comforting. Her home was still exactly the same.

Two

“I’m Ruthie.” the lady at the counter introduced herself, patting her napkin in search of silverware.

Eleanor shoved the coffee pot back in place and produced a spoon. “Eleanor. Right, Ruthie, can I get you anything else?”

She asked for an orange juice.

Eleanor had been at the Shelby ski-lodge diner since eight a.m., running on three cups of coffee by the time the lunch rush started to dwindle. The chatter of some dozen tourists and native Vermonters made a dull buzz in her ears as she emptied the last of a bottle of orange juice.

“Emilio, more orange juice. Please.” she tacked on hastily. Emilio slid his phone into his back pocket and disappeared through the kitchen.

Like everything else in town, the lodge hadn’t changed one bit. Everyone who’d worked at the diner when she’d left was still there. Lily had been eager to accept her offer to help out with the ski-season rush while she was home.

The news was always on. A single, boxy TV straight out of the 90s was mounted on the wall above the counter, and Eleanor always found herself staring at it whenever things slowed down enough for boredom to creep in.

Emilio and Lily gossiped in low voices at the end of the counter, gazes flicking back and forth between each other and their phones. Ruthie slurped her tomato-basil soup two spaces down as Eleanor stared up at the screen without really seeing it from her stolen seat.

She felt the tension shift before her eyes registered the blue-red flashing. It was as though the entire diner collectively inhaled— and didn’t exhale.

“Isn’t that—?” her voice was thick around the lump in her throat.

“Where’s the remote?” Luca was suddenly at her shoulder, scrabbling at the countertops, pushing newspapers aside while Eleanor stood, glued to the spot. Their soundless, 1x1 television broadcast a woman in a purple scarf and earmuffs, standing in the blur of police sirens. Ski lifts, frozen but still swaying in windy mid-air sloped up the mountain behind her. The white was overtaken by black and blue uniforms.

“Isn’t that the west side?”

Lily, her face a stoic mask, took the remote and raised it. The volume bars clicked up one by one.

“— Live on the scene, tragedy has struck this quiet town: a little girl’s body discovered in the woods on the west face of Shelby ski-resort. This unidentified female is suspected to have been dead no more than 24 hours, when she was found by maintenance workers tending the trails—”

The rest faded into blurry silence, like the room had been plunged underwater, and frozen. All Eleanor could hear anymore was Luca whispering “Fuck,” next to her ear.

She kept staring. To tear her gaze away from the white-clad forms carrying a stretcher between them felt impossible. Like a car crash, she thought dizzily. On the stretcher was a black body bag. A little girl’s body.

She had read about this. She had studied this.

People said that it was the kind of job that changed you. That what Eleanor wanted to do with her life could seriously fuck her up. If spending your days researching the worst type of crimes and the worst type of people doesn’t affect you, you’d have to be some kind of robot. Or a psychopath yourself.

She was prepared for that. She had decided that it would be worth it. She wasn’t prepared for this. Nobody ever told her to expect to be standing in the middle of nowhere before she was old enough to drink, watching a dead girl be loaded into a truck.

It could happen anywhere. That was another thing people said. Anywhere, Eleanor had reasoned, but here. The only thing people died of in Shelby was old age and the occasional freak accident. Little girls didn’t die in Shelby. Except they did. Today, they did.